


April 4th

by jaythewriter



Series: Tim's Wish [1]
Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Also something this fandom rarely sees: HAPPY THREE-WAY RELATIONSHIP!!!, Contains spoilers for entries 80 and beyond, Fix-It Ending Sort-Of, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-21
Packaged: 2018-02-04 23:22:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1797109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaythewriter/pseuds/jaythewriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim has finally found peace with his two best friends in the world, or as much peace as he can find when all the troubles in the world are still heavy upon his shoulders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for blood, knife mention, and a reference to self-harm.

Life is good.

Nothing too over the top. Tim never was one for the grand old American dream, with two kids and a dog and a nicely painted picket fence that serves no purpose beyond decoration. 

Instead, he’s living in a small house, two bedrooms, one bathroom… the works. It belonged to his mother’s mother, who apparently felt in her dying hours that this home ought to go to him. The general thought is that he only got it because he’s the sole boy born to the Wrights. She always was old-fashioned like that.

Tim doesn’t care how or where he lives, so long as he can live at all. He’s grateful for this home, in all its cozy nooks with old furniture that sinks to cradle him and his friends, but he could just as easily deal with living in a dinky single room apartment.

He would, anyway, but Brian and Jay, he has a feeling they wouldn’t like that so much.

Brian was the first to move in when Tim offered to share his place alongside his two best friends. He didn’t even hesitate, seeing as he wasn’t exactly in the best spot home-wise. Somebody must have broken into his old place and tore it up. No idea who did it, no idea why they would, but that’s all in the past now.

What’s most important to Brian is that they’re all together.

(Very important, in fact, since that first night was spent tossing back celebratory coconut rum and pressing together lips that couldn’t seem to separate no matter what-- not that their owners really wanted to separate.)

As for Jay, well, Jay loves this house as much as anyone could love it. Nobody sleeps better in it than he does, capable of dropping for a nap nearly anywhere. The living room is his favorite place to drop out of reality for a while; his laptop will sit open on the coffee table, displaying his latest work going out to one zine or another, and he’ll be collapsed on the couch hugging a pillow to his face.

When he’s conscious though, Jay couldn’t be more content to be where he is. He walks through the house using gentle pattering feet, often clutching a cup of coffee close to his chest. Every morning, it’s a new spiel at the dining table about how this particular flavor of coffee beans is nice and mild, or how the last cup he had could improve by following today’s example. 

Tim listens, of course, even if it gets to be repetitive at times. If coffee is that important to Jay, then it’s important to him too. 

(It’s funny, Tim never saw himself as somebody who could crave love this much. Brian saw something in him he was too inexperienced to notice before, saw it in the gentle words he uses with Jay and the attentive hands that brushes back his hair as he’s drifting off to sleep.)

(Brian didn’t mind when Tim came to him and asked if it was okay if he and Jay, well, decided to declare their friendship more of a romantic thing than a platonic thing, not that Tim really knows how to put it in words. He stumbled and fussed and choked on his air and broke on his first friend ever, terrified he’d lose him to jealousy or misunderstanding-- and he didn’t. All that happened was a simple kiss to the forehead, a gentle smile, and a promise that as long as he checked in every so often, Tim could do whatever the fuck he wanted with Jay.)

(And so, there Tim is, with two boyfriends who are also so many other things to him: his first friends, his only friends, his best friends.)

(People who are his and people he belongs to.)

Every day life consists of Tim and Brian off at their jobs, Tim stuck in a kind-of-dead-end retail shop that has him stocking boxes and Brian working at a /gym/ of all places. It’s a steady income, as exhausting as both jobs can be, and they always have their writer boy waiting at home to ramble on about his latest work to them. 

Tim couldn’t think of a better way to live. He doesn’t like to question how he got to this point, and neither does Brian. They’re both mature enough to understand that picking at the threads of such a good thing doesn’t lead to anything satisfying.

Jay, though, can’t help being himself. He’s Jay, he’s the one constantly asking what Tim’s doing, why he’s doing it, where he’s going to be today.

So, maybe Tim shouldn’t be too surprised when one summer evening, Jay begins to poke and prod around.

Tim is seated out on the front porch when it starts, basking in the breeze that whispers of autumn’s early arrival. His eyelids are heavy, but he’s still present enough to hear Jay rustling around in the living room through the gaping window, opening and closing drawers, shoving furniture aside.

Seeing as he knows absolute /dick/ about the writing process, Tim assumes it’s a weird author thing, that Jay needs a more suitable environment to get creative in. So, he continues with the book he has open in his lap, a library book Brian threw at him when he insisted that Tim needed to keep up with his literature.

It isn’t until Jay opens the screen door and lets it swing shut behind him. Tim spares him the corner of his eye and a light smile, but nothing else, assuming all is well.

Except Jay doesn’t sit down on the steps to soak up the last rays of sun or drop into the second chair next to Tim. He stands at his side, feet shuffling, hands twisting behind his back. 

“Tim?”

The quaver in Jay’s voice touches a chord in Tim that makes his heart judder in a way that it hasn’t in years. He doesn’t dare look up from his book, though. Nonchalance is his shield here.

“Mhm?”

Familiar blue eyes that he so loves fix upon him from across the porch. Normally when those eyes look at him, his first instinct is to smile. Right now, his stomach is twisting and curling in a way it hasn’t for Jay in so long, since the first time since he saw Jay sitting outside his doctor’s office, camera at his side.

(yes he saw him he wanted to walk right past him but stupid insistent Jay chased him down and the rest is history)

“Why don’t we have any photos of us around? From after college?”

(‘he is a LIAR’)

“…does it matter?” Tim asks, flipping a page of this novel that he’s lost complete track of. Someone fell in love with someone else’s sister, he thinks there’s a werewolf involved somehow. 

Jay’s standing closer now.

“It-- no, I get it, you hate being in front of cameras. But there’s literally /nothing/. None of me, or you, or, or even Brian.”

Tim lets himself look, and he’s absolutely frozen in place by the pained confusion he sees in Jay’s eyes.

He’s kept many secrets in his life. Kept the secret of the tall man from his mother. Kept the scars hidden beneath too many sweaty layers. Kept his other self from Jay, kept the tape of Jessica’s death from Jay, kept so many, many things from Jay.

This, out of all those secrets, is the worst of the lot.

(he is, and always will be a liar.)

And, god, sometimes Tim hates how forgetful Jay is. He worried once or twice that the effects of what they went through hadn’t been entirely rubbed off, that his memory was going to be permanently slippery. Turns out, though, it’s just Jay being Jay, and as much as him forgetting milk again or needing help with email passwords irritates the fuck out of Tim, he still loves that part of him.

He loves it even more when Brian’s car chooses that moment to crunch over the driveway gravel. The tires roll on up and the brakes screech, and through the window Tim can see something white in the passenger’s seat. 

Jay, being ever pokey and curious, rushes down to him, bare feet smacking against the wooden porch steps. His and Tim’s conversation may as well have never taken place.

He makes it to Brian just as he’s getting out of the car and moving to get the white something. Even with his heart in his throat, Tim’s mouth quirks up into a small grin when he hears the word ‘cake’ between his two friends and watches Jay lose his little mind. 

“Cake?! What flavor? Where is it from? You didn’t spend too much, did you? Can I have some?”

Those are all legitimate questions that Tim also wants answered, but he’s more concerned about the ‘why’. Brian isn’t somebody who goes out for junk food on a whim; he keeps himself running daily, refusing to let go of the muscle he’s managed to build back up. 

Fueled by unending excitement for all things spontaneous and sweet, Jay leaves Brian’s side and rushes back up the porch, past Tim and into the house. He yells back that he’ll get plates and forks ready, just so nobody doubts his dedication to the cause of devouring this cake. 

Shaking his head, Tim rises from his reclining chair and shuts the door behind Jay. The porch creaks as Brian ascends it, bearing the cause of all the fuss; it’s a small round thing, big enough for three, swirly vanilla frosting around the edges and chocolate spread across the middle. Nothing too special, but it’s tasty looking for sure. 

“So, did I forget some kind of anniversary?” Tim asks, gesturing to the cake with a nod. Brian pauses at his side, giving him a faint grin.

“No, I don’t think so,” Brian assures him. He shrugs, glancing down at the sweet dessert in his hands. His smile falters, forming a tight line that hits the same place in Tim that Jay’s confused tone struck. “Maybe. But if you did, so did I. To be honest, I just bought this on the way home from the gym ‘cos it /felt/ right.”

He lets out a long breath from his nose before looking up at Tim, searching his face with curious brown eyes.

“What’s today? April 4th?”

Tim’s chest is nauseatingly tight when he nods.

Brian utters a puzzled noise, shrugs one more time, and brushes past him, calling after Jay to calm down and get settled in. 

Tim remains where he is, slowly sinking down to sit on the step.

He still remembers. Lying there on the stairwell. Blood that isn’t his mixing with the blood that is his. Seeping down his fingers, dripping to the grey filthy ground. A knife glinting in his hand, clattering as it drops.

Lungs full of tasteless dark ooze, he pled with something far stronger than him, something he’s fought against his whole life. 

Please. Please let his friends live. They don’t deserve to sit in the Ark, forever caught in their last moments, repeating them over and over to the point where they don’t even scream in pain anymore-- they merely sob, words breaking in their raw throats.

Let them live without the knowledge of this. Let them be happy. Let them never discover that there is a darkness hidden in this world so terrible that it can murder you without ever stopping your heart. 

He’ll live with it all. He’ll carry it all on his shoulders for the rest of his life. It can prick into him, act as imaginary stabbing knives sticking out of his flesh, constantly ripping through him and leaving him utterly broken.

But so long as they’re okay, he’s okay.

Tim has no idea why the creature granted him this wish. He thinks about it sometimes, lies awake pondering what he ever did for it to make it even consider giving him what he wants.

Maybe it’s that it finally had what it wanted thanks to him-- it finally had Alex.

Maybe it knew the mere memory of all this was enough to torment him.

Maybe there’s an underlying reason that Tim will never be able to comprehend due to having the mind of a human being versus having a monster’s.

No matter what, he can never tell Jay and Brian.

And, hearing them laugh together over Jay getting frosting on his nose, Tim feels it’s worth it. Every nightmare, every nervous twitch, everything that those two will never understand but tolerate anyway because they care about him.

Tim lets himself unfold from the ground and slowly shuffle back to the front door.

He’s the only one to remember why April 4th is a special day. So he might as well celebrate it right, alongside Jay and Brian.

Alex deserves that much.


	2. memory like a burnt out shell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim waking up after Entry 86 in a most unexpected place with a most unexpected person.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place before the previous chapter, after Tim unintentionally strikes a deal with The Operator to save his friends and hold all the burden on his own. 
> 
> Trigger warnings for blood, references to knives and firearms, and fire.

You’re home.

You don’t know how. You closed your eyes, felt the sharp jab of metal stairs beneath your ribcage, and the floor fell out from beneath you. 

Death isn’t a friend of yours, but he is someone you know well enough. Having the ground leave you behind and let you drift through space means you’re on your way out, and this time, you were sure that it wasn’t coming back. 

(And, yes, you have to admit it to yourself: you had the faintest hope that it wouldn’t return. To drift for the rest of time in a permanent slumber would mean never having to face what you just did.)

(Never washing the blood drying into rusty cracking splotches on your skin, never looking at that fucking footage and having to /edit/ it, never thinking of those last terrible words that Alex uttered as he bled out in front of you.)

And as soon as you had settled into the blissful nothingness surrounding you, it was gone.

Skin, bones, weight, you have it all again. Your eyes blink open and you’re looking at your ceiling, gone splotchy black from hate-fueled flames. 

Soot hangs heavy in the air, intruding into your lungs and pulling a violent fit of coughing out of you. Liquid copper bubbles at the back of your throat, leaving a foul taste on your tongue. Coughing mutates into gagging, and you add to the mess of ashes that acts as the floor now, spitting up red ooze. 

“Shit,” you utter through an air bubble, grimacing at the coppery mess it creates when it pops. More blood flies from your lips as you spit and sputter. 

Any hope you had of getting up easily is lost the moment you press your palms to the floorboards and feel your arms violently tremble. You give up and lay still on the ground, breathing hard through all the disgusting substances flowing inside your lungs. Once upon a time, this air was clean, and you coughed solely because you refused to give up your expensive little lung cancer inducing habit. 

Then--

You’re hearing things. You have to be. It wouldn’t surprise you, to have your brain a little bit scrambled after sinking a blade into the neck of a man you once laughed with and called your friend. 

Hallucinating the wheezy cough of a man you saw gunned down and left for dead wouldn’t be the weirdest thing your fucked up mind has ever done to you. 

That theory is smashed away within seconds, though; your hallucinations never sound this crystal clear, practically in high definition. The weakness in your arms is completely forgotten about; you claw your way across the ground, button-up shirt gathering up ashes within its threads. It’ll never be blue again, no matter how many times you put it through the washer.

That’s hardly the first thing on your mind, though. No, you’re lost the moment you scoot over and peer around the hallway corner and /there/, there’s two legs there, skinny shins wrapped up in torn denim that’s patchy with red and brown. 

Those legs walked many miles alongside yours, fleeing through fields from supernatural and natural beings alike, clutching cameras and stolen food when there wasn’t enough money for both hotels and sustenance. 

Arms be damned, you’re up on your feet before you can even stop to doubt your strength. Breathing is the hardest thing in the world right now, gurgling air heaving in and out of your panting mouth for every other heavy step you take. To you, though, it’s nothing, all minor annoyances in comparison to the buzzing hope in your heart, bouncing down into your stomach and back against your ribcage.

The living room is nothing but wreckage upon more wreckage. What was once the couch is frayed threads sticking out of a metal frame, and your ukulele case is missing altogether. Patches of ceiling are missing entirely, permitting outside sunlight to drop inside the room and illuminate the lazily floating particles of soot. 

What is most important, though, is the body splayed out where it once lay crying out for a camera, limbs bound.

Jay is propped up against the kitchen counter, arms wrapped tight around himself. Shivers wrack his frail form, and his breath comes in quick cold puffs. His outfit is the same as Tim last saw it, a dark green shirt that he likely hadn’t changed out of for days and the same pair of jeans. The hat he wore rests at his side, probably knocked off by his violent shaking.

Standing out against his shirt is a wide shape, a harsh shade of crimson that nearly glows beneath the intruding sunlight. 

You can’t get to him fast enough. Suddenly, you seem to have forgotten how to walk, and your feet slide against the burnt carpet. Splinters prick into your palms and your knees ache upon impact against the solid floor, but you might as well be numb to all of it. 

“Jay,” you call out to him, his name leaving you in a strangled gargle of something that refuses to fuck off out of your lungs. You cough, forceful and harsh, tasting bile on the edge of your throat, but it clears you up and that’s all that matters right now so you can call out to him again. 

“Jay, it’s me, I’m here!”

Blue eyes that have always looked through you or away from you in fear now go to you without a hint of hesitance. They grow huge, glossing over and shining with tears that Jay doesn’t bother to wipe away. 

“Tim, how-- where am I, why…”

He turns his wide-eyed gaze to the ceiling, to the room lying in shambles around the two of you, a rotting skeleton of what once was a place of safety and comfort. Somewhere you almost called home but couldn’t bring yourself to because nobody important was there with you.

(And now that there is someone here, this place you once called your own is nothing, a whole bunch of nothing condensed around the only thing that matters.)

“I know about as much as you do,” you confess, but you don’t allow Jay the chance to speak further. You close the space between yourself and Jay, batting aside the man’s arms away from where they laid crossed upon his shuddering stomach. 

You fold up the end of his shirt, ignoring his questioning whimpers and brushing them off with a gentle hush. It isn’t the thought of seeing the potential wound beneath that sets off a fit of nausea inside of you, but seeing it on /him/, confirmed through your eyes, more than the lens of a camera. Hard evidence beneath your trembling fingers versus a fleeting image on a screen…

Then, nothing. The tension coiled up within your stomach pops in a single second, dizzying you into a baffled silence. 

Beneath Jay’s shirt lies even skin, unblemished, a single freckle settled right beneath his heart. It beats wildly underneath the hand you smooth over his chest, alive, alive, very much alive. 

You’re laughing. Or maybe you’re sobbing. A noise is breaking from your lips, rapid and high-pitched, and you could care less what it actually is. Your arms go around Jay, hanging onto him like he’s going slip away any moment and leave you all alone in the world again.

His arms find the space in the middle of your back and return your embrace, though he isn’t holding you for the same reason you’re holding him. This spell that you’ve fallen under--

“I-- Tim, what happened? Why am I covered in blood?”

It’s broken the moment he mutters into your ear, voice cracking under the weight of his confusion. 

You lift your head and catch his eyes. 

There’s recognition there; this is the face of a man turning to somebody he loves for answers. He knows your name. Knows your voice, what you look like. This isn’t a Jay who is a stranger to you, nor are you a stranger to him.

It’s how you would have Jay, if you could’ve ever had him back.

And here he is, pawing at your back, the murderous exhaustion lining his eyes ebbed away, instead leaving the normal bags that are permanently imprinted into the hollows of his skull.

“Jay,” you begin with a deep breath, gripping his arms and pulling them from your back. You hold tight, too tight, feeling him shiver beneath you. “It’s a really long story, but… what’s important is that you’re okay. And we’re going to get out of here, and we’ll find a safe place to stay. Okay?”

As he gives you a shaky nod, you’re already crafting the string of lies you’re going to have to tell him so he doesn’t know how he truly ended up here, due to forces that believed you would suffer best with the weight of not one, but two men’s memories upon your exhausted shoulders.

How believable would it be to Jay if Tim told him he’d wandered here while sleepwalking?

(What hurts the most is that it’s not the least fantastical thing that’s happened to this man.)

(But he doesn’t have to know that.)


End file.
